Best Foot Forward (The Best Girls 3)

He pressed his lips together until they whitened. “I wish you’d tell Grace to tell Charlie that.”

“She still won’t talk to you?”

“She still maintains we’re too different and I’m only infatuated with her because she’s a challenge.”

“Are you sure she’s wrong? No offense, but she’s probably the first girl who hasn’t fallen into your arms when she was given the opportunity.”

A scowl spread over his face. “If I can’t even convince you, how can I convince Charlie? I wish I could undo my past, but I can only change what I do from here on out.”

“I’ll admit so far the change has been fairly impressive. I just wonder if you’ll keep it up if Charlie keeps resisting you.”

His voice was bitter. “I guess you’ll have to wait and see.”

“Josh, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said it that way. I’m really only worried you’ll get hurt if this keeps up.”

“It hurts already, but I’m committed. And you know if I commit, I stick with it to the end.”

Brad thought the end might be rather painful for Josh, but he kept that idea to himself. “So was it clear or cloudy?” he asked, referring to the appearance of the spinal fluid Josh had drawn.

“Actually, it was clear. I’ve been thinking... Could the headache escalation be solely a result of the spinal tap?”

“I don’t know—it was incredibly painful.”

“But it’s subsided now, and that’s consistent with a spinal tap headache.”

“True.” He considered the idea. This diagnosis had a much better prognosis than SAH.

“And to be honest, your cognitive function seems perfectly normal right now, except perhaps where Grace is concerned.” Josh winked at him.

“So go home and get some sleep. If the tap is positive, they can do an MRI without you.”

He frowned. “I think I should stay until we get the results.”

“Go home—you’re making me nervous.”

Josh stifled a yawn as he stood and stretched. “Okay, I think I’ll go. But I’m coming back if there’s a positive result on the lab.”

“Hey Josh... I... Thank you.” The lump in his throat felt gargantuan. “I owe you one.”

“I hope you never get a chance to pay me back in the ER. But I’ll let you buy me dinner if your brain doesn’t turn to jelly.”

Brad chuckled. “Thanks a lot.”

*****

Olivia arrived at five a.m. with ample time to drop by Brad’s room before her rotation at the hospital.

“Hey, we didn’t get a phone call,” she said when she saw his eyes were open. “So what does that mean? Are you still waiting for the results?”

Brad smiled. “No, it means the results were good—no xanthochromia in the samples.”

“And what does that mean? Is this something I need to know for school?”

“Not for your RN, but you might as well learn it for when you’re in med school. If the bleeding is from the brain instead of trauma from the lumbar puncture then the heme is degraded into bilirubin. And the bilirubin is detectable after twelve hours by spectrophotometry as xanthochromia, which is really just a big word for a yellow color in the cerebrospinal fluid. So... no xanthochromia means no subarachnoid hemorrhage.”

She repeated the words, attempting to file the information in her brain for later retrieval. “What about the other symptoms? The headache and the confusion?”

“The initial confusion was from the concussion, and we think the headache came from exertion after the spinal tap.”